With the 2024 college football season having officially come to a close Monday evening, eyes are already beginning to shift to 2025, as LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier has already found himself as one of FanDuel’s top candidates to become next year’s Heisman Trophy winner.
For the second season in a row, LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier looks like a potential future Heisman Trophy winner
Former Colorado cornerback Travis Hunter defied any and all odds during the 2024 season, becoming the first non-offensive player to win the Heisman Trophy in nearly three decades. With that said, if recent history holds any weight at all, it’s still largely a quarterback dominated award, and as we begin to shift our attention to the 2025 college football season, the early odds certainly back this claim up.
While it’s important to note that there are still over seven months remaining until the 2025 season, the early indications are that the quarterback position should once again be a dominant group, led by a combination of returning veterans, as well as up and coming former five-star recruits.
While names like Arch Manning from Texas or Drew Allar from Penn State will grab most headlines over the next few months, there’s another name resting at the top of the way-too-early Heisman odds, and he just so happens to call Baton Rouge home.
Entering his fifth, and final season of college football, LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier was abundantly patient while waiting for his turn as the purple and gold signal caller. Rated as a four-star recruit in the class of 2021, he was tabbed as the future in Baton Rouge fairly early on in his career. If anything, it was just a matter of whether he was willing to wait.
Fortunately for everyone involved, he was willing, and now, four years later, he’s entering the 2025 season as the FanDuel Heisman favorite in just his second full year as a starter.
Logging 4,052 yards, 29 touchdowns and 12 interceptions on 525 passing attempts, the 6-foot-2, 200-pound quarterback out of Lake Charles, LA, quietly had himself a spectacular first season as the primary signal caller for the purple and gold.
Even better, he finished the season as well as anyone in the country, recording 313 yards, three touchdowns and one interception against Baylor, en route to earning 2024 Texas Bowl MVP honors.
Now, as we look away from this past season, and towards 2025, the biggest question is a matter of how much he can improve over the coming offseason.
In 2019, Joe Burrow made the jump from 2,894 yards and 16 touchdowns on 57.8 percent passing, to 5,671 yards and 60 touchdowns on 76.3 percent passing. In 2023, Jayden Daniels made the jump from 2,913 yards and 17 touchdowns on 68.6 percent passing, to 3,812 yards and 40 touchdowns on 72.2 percent passing.
Can Garrett Nussmeier make a similar jump in 2025? It’d be irresponsible to expect it, but if he somehow does manage to, it’s hard to imagine how he doesn’t at least find himself in New York as one of the top-four candidates to ultimately win the 2025 Heisman Trophy.
FanDuel 2025 Heisman Trophy odds leaders (1/21/2025)
- LSU QB Garrett Nussmeier (+850)
- Texas QB Arch Manning (+850)
- Clemson QB Cade Klubnik (+1200)
- Tennessee QB Nico Iamaleava (+1200)
- Penn State QB Drew Allar (+1200)
- Ohio State WR Jeremiah Smith (+1200)
- South Carolina QB LaNorris Sellers (+1800)
- Ohio State QB Julian Sayin (+1800)
- Miami QB Carson Beck (+2000)
- Oregon QB Dante Moore (+2000)
- Oklahoma QB John Mateer (+2500)
- Florida QB DJ Lagway (+2500)
- SMU QB Kevin Jennings (+3000)
- Louisville QB Miller Moss (+3300)
- Ole Miss QB Austin Simmons (+3300)
- Georgia QB Gunner Stockton (+3300)
- Arizona State QB Sam Leavitt (+3300)
- Alabama WR Ryan Williams (+3500)
- Texas A&M QB Marcel Reed (+4000)
- Notre Dame QB Steve Angeli (+4500)
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